BOOK ANNOUNCEMENT / PRESS RELEASE Cinema and the City: Film and Urban Societies in a Global Context edited by Mark Shiel and Tony Fitzmaurice Blackwell Publishing, 2001 Available now HB: ISBN 0-631-22243-X PB: ISBN 0-631-22244-8 297pp, 21 illus. We are pleased to announce the launch of a an exciting new edited volume, published by Blackwell, entitled 'Cinema and the City: Film and Urban Societies in a Global Context'. 'Cinema and the City' is concerned with the relationship between the most important cultural form - cinema - and the most important form of social organization - the city - in the twentieth century (and, for the time being at least, the twenty-first) as this relationship operates and has been experienced as a lived social reality from World War Two to the present. The book is interested in the relationship between the cinema and the city in a wide range of geographical and historical contexts but, particularly, as it may help us to apprehend and respond to large social and cultural processes such as globalization today. Bringing together such disciplines as Film Studies, Sociology, Urban Studies, and Geography, this book focuses on: the active role of film production, distribution, and exhibition in the physical growth and identity formation of cities worldwide; the integral role of cinema in the contemporary global economy; the relationship between the uneven development of cities and their film cultures; the ways in which different forms of power and resistance, social organization, and urban structure may be imagined and articulated in film and its political economy. The book presents case studies ranging from the prototypical post-modern city of Los Angeles, to the colonial and post colonial world. Specific attention is devoted to the US (including LA, New York, Philadelphia, Houston), Canada (Montréal), Europe (Milan, Paris, London, Dublin), Australia (Sydney), South Africa (Johannesburg), Nigeria (Lagos), the Philippines (Manila) and Vietnam (Saigon). The book belongs to Blackwell's series Studies in Urban and Social Change - which engages with the latest developments in urban and regional studies - and aims to build and promote interdisciplinary contact between Film Studies, Sociology and other fields, including Urban Studies, Geography, Cultural Studies, and Architecture. "This is a great synthetic volume, piecing together the various intertextualities of film and sociology in our reading of the twentieth century city, kickstarted by genealogies of Hollywood and Los Angeles from Mike Davis and John Walton. A very impressive achievement." John Orr, Professor of Sociology, University of Edinburgh Table of Contents: 1) 'Cinema and the City in History and Theory': Mark Shiel 2) 'Film and Urban Societies in a Global Context': Tony Fitzmaurice Section 1: Postmodern Mediations of the City: Los Angeles 3) 'Bunker Hill: Hollywood's Dark Shadow': Mike Davis 4) 'Film Mystery as Urban History: The Case of Chinatown': John Walton 5) 'Return to Oz: The Hollywood Redevelopment Project, or Film History as Urban Renewal': Josh Stenger Section 2: Urban Identities, Production and Exhibition 6) 'Shamrock: Houston's Green Promise': James Hay 7) 'From Workshop to Backlot: The Greater Philadelphia Film Office': Paul Swann 8) 'Cities: Real and Imagined': Geoffrey Nowell-Smith 9) 'Emigrating to New York in 3-D: Stereoscopic Vision in IMAX's Cinematic City': Mark Neumann 10) 'Finding a Place at the Downtown Picture Palace: The Tampa Theater, Florida': Janna Jones 11) 'Global Cities and the International Film Festival Economy': Julian Stringer Section 3: Cinema and the Postcolonial Metropolis 12) 'Streetwalking in the Cinema of the City: Capital Flows through Saigon': J. Paul Narkunas 13) 'Cityscape: The Capital Infrastructuring and Technologization of Manila' : Rolando B. Tolentino 14) 'The Politics of Dislocation: Airport Tales, The Castle': Justine Lloyd 15) 'Representing the Apartheid City: South African Cinema in the 1950s and Jamie Uys's The Urgent Queue': Gary Baines 16) 'The Visual Rhetoric of the Ambivalent City in Nigerian Video Films': Obododimma Oha 17) 'Montréal Between Strangeness, Home and Flow': Bill Marshall 18) '(Mis-) Representing the Irish Urban Landscape': Kevin Rockett Section 4: Urban Reactions On-screen Idealism and Defeat 19) 'Postwar Urban Redevelopment, the British Film Industry and The Way We Live': Leo Enticknap 20) 'Naked: Social Realism and the Urban Wasteland': Mike Mason Escape and Invasion 21) 'Jacques Tati's Play Time as New Babylon': Laurent Marie 22) 'Poaching on Public Space: Urban Autonomous Zones in French Banlieue Films': Adrian Fielder Index Dr Mark Shiel Lecturer in Film Studies School of Cultural Studies Sheffield Hallam University Psalter Lane Campus Sheffield S11 8UZ UK tel.: +44.114.2252621 fax: +44.114.2252603 ---- To sign off Screen-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF Screen-L in the message. Problems? Contact [log in to unmask]